David Baltimore Quotations

The American Cancer Society has done the American public a really great disservice.

When we talk about stem cells, we are actually talking about a complicated series of things, including adult stem cells which are largely cells devoted to replacing individual tissues like blood elements or liver or even the brain.

What does gene A do? What does gene B do? What does it do in different contexts? What's its importance? We know the answer to that for a very small number of genes, the ones that made themselves evident many years ago.

There is actually a fair amount of money being put behind science today.

I think we can allow the therapeutic uses of nuclear transplant technology, which we call cloning, without running the danger of actually having live human beings born.

The argument has been made in Congress that it is slippery slope if you allow therapeutic, what people people are calling therapeutic cloning, then you will get reproductive cloning.

I think they are looking for publicity and they are looking for a name for themselves.

When are we going to say cancer is cured? I'm not sure when that will happen, if that will happen because cancer is a very slippery disease and it involves a vast number of cells in the body and those cells are continually mutating.

So I don't know where he cut corners and where he didn't.

I don't think people took it seriously because it was such an obviously unattainable goal. I was surprised, and I know lots of other people were surprised, that he chose a time so near, when we see it as a very difficult problem.